My mom texted me a photo from a magazine recently while she was sitting in the dentist office. I wish I could find the photo because I would love to stare at it again but from what I remember, it was a stacked chocolate cake made from pieces of a cupcake, decorated with a buttercream rose on top. I thought how cute, but then thought getting each of your cupcakes to bake evenly enough stack could prove to be difficult. So I tried my hand at something similar yet faster, and in my opinion, easier.

I baked one doctored vanilla cake mix in two13 x 9 Pans, resulting in two flat rectangle cakes. Using a Round Cutter , I cut 12 circles from each cake. It was quick, simple and hardly any cutting involved! Instead of smearing on the icing between the layers with a spatula, I piped pink icing between each layer and finished with a rose from a Wilton 1M Tip. Each cake took less than 2 minutes to assemble.

They are beyond darling and the perfect size dessert to serve for Mother’s Day. I used my French Vanilla Cake recipe from My Book: Eat More Dessert but you could use any recipe and icing color you wish!

People have said over the years, “I wish I was your friend so I could come to your parties”. Ha! You’re all my friends!! I just only have so much room in my home, or you’d all be invited to everything! I’ll be setting these workshops up just as you’d experience if you were coming over to my farmhouse….warm, casual, yet purposeful. You can plan on cozying in for the evening with drinks, snacks, beautiful table settings and learn the great art of cookie decorating and party planning!

The classes will be held May 14th and May 21st in Bellevue, WA. The 2 1/2 hours will be broken up into two parts. The first half I’ll demonstrate how to prepare my no-fail cookie dough, then roll, cut and bake the perfect sugar cookies. While baking, I’ll share many tips and tricks for baking and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to ask questions. As the cookies are cooling, I’ll teach how to make and color buttercream icing and how to properly fill icing bags. Once the bags are filled, you’ll learn how to pipe buttercream onto sugar cookies using a variety of techniques as well as my newest technique, dipping cookies in melted buttercream.

Each attendee will be provided all tools and materials needed to create and decorate, as well as a take home gift bag. You won’t want to miss this! It will be a night full of fun, laughter and celebration!

I love decorating sugar cookies. But sometimes I don’t have it in me to make a bunch of different colors, fill up a billion different icing bags and then spend hours piping icing onto cookies. I got to thinking, there has to be a faster way.

I experimented a little and guess what…there is. It’s a different look than my signature buttercream iced cookies but when you’re short on time or have little helpers, this technique is perfect!!

How To Decorate Cookies in SECONDS
(Assuming your cookies are already baked and buttercream icing is prepared)

2. Microwave your icing for 30 seconds. Stir. You may need to microwave an additional 10 seconds if it isn’t fully melted.

3. Add 1 Tablespoon of milk to thin icing. Depending on how much icing you’ve melted, you may need to add more milk. About 1 Tablespoon of milk per 1 cup icing. Stir until icing consistency is runny off a spatula.

4. Line counter with wax paper or a cooling rack. Dip cookie upside down in bowl of icing. Scrape sides lightly along bowl edge. Turn right side up and shake cookie to evenly coat. Place on wax paper or cooling rack to dry.

5. If using sprinkles, sprinkle immediately after dipping each cookie. Icing hardens very fast!

Within the video I also shared a little insight on using hashtags. I see hashtags gone wrong daily. The problem is, people don’t know how to use them.

Understanding Hashtags:

*Hashtags were originally created in Twitter as a point of reference and way to organize conversation. So perhaps you attended a conference, party or wedding, you could easily see all the photos from that event by searching the event hashtag.

*Hashtags are great for breaking news. Often you’ll see a news story with a specific hashtag. You can easily follow the feed using the news hashtag for real time updates.

*TV shows have also taken a liking to hashtags. Many shows are using hashtags, for example, The Bachelor. By using #theBachelor hashtag, I can follow along on Twitter to see what others are saying about the show.

Hashtag rules:

1. Limit the amount of hashtags you use to 1-3. A huge paragraph of them looks like spam.

2. Use proper punctuation. Using an apostrophe will break up your hashtag. For example #jenny’sbirthday will only hashtag #jenny because hashtags don’t recognize punctuation. Same for emoji’s. If using multiple hashtags, put a space between them. In Facebook, only the first hashtag will actually work if you don’t use spaces.

3. Have a point. Don’t be that person who uses hashtags as an extra comment following the caption. It makes no sense and ends up looking like a run on sentence. Ask yourself, does this hashtag have a purpose? Will someone actually search my hashtag, or is it just a continuation of my photo caption?

I mentioned Chatbooks in my video. I LOVE Chatbooks. They’re inexpensive books you can order that print your instagram feeds. As a busy mom of two kids, it’s so hard to find time to scrapbook, print photos, or keep up with photo albums or memory books. I was thrilled to find Chatbooks and print my entire instagram in books (only $6/book) and have all the photos and memories in printed form. Check them out and order your first book on me by using code Jenny482.